The Royal Literary Fund is a benevolent fund set up to help published British writers in financial difficulties. It was founded by Reverend David Williams in 1790 and has received bequests and donations, including royal patronage, ever since. Williams was inspired to set up the Fund by the death in debtor's prison of a translator of Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

's dialogues, Floyer Sydenham

Floyer Sydenham

Floyer Sydenham was an English scholar of Ancient Greek.He was a Fellow and sometime Moderator of Philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford, and later Rector of Esher. He translated some of the Dialogues of Plato into English, and wrote a dissertation on Heraclitus, which failed of being appreciated...

.

The Royal Literary Fund has given assistance to many distinguished writers over its history, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

, Samuel Rousseau

Samuel Rousseau

Samuel Rousseau was a British oriental scholar and printer who compiled the first Arabic-English dictionary and translated and printed the first English language editions of several important Arabic works...

, François-René de Chateaubriand

François-René de Chateaubriand

François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand was a French writer, politician, diplomat and historian. He is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature.-Early life and exile:...

, Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Love Peacock was an English satirist and author.Peacock was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work...

, James Hogg

James Hogg

James Hogg was a Scottish poet and novelist who wrote in both Scots and English.-Early life:James Hogg was born in a small farm near Ettrick, Scotland in 1770 and was baptized there on 9 December, his actual date of birth having never been recorded...

, Leigh Hunt

Leigh Hunt

James Henry Leigh Hunt , best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist, poet and writer.-Early life:Leigh Hunt was born at Southgate, London, where his parents had settled after leaving the USA...

, Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.-Early life:...

, Richard Jefferies

Richard Jefferies

John Richard Jefferies was an English nature writer, noted for his depiction of English rural life in essays, books of natural history, and novels. His childhood on a small Wiltshire farm had a great influence on him and provides the background to all his major works of fiction...

, Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...

, D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...

, James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

, Ivy Compton-Burnett

Ivy Compton-Burnett

Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett, DBE was an English novelist, published as I. Compton-Burnett. She was awarded the 1955 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Mother and Son.-Life:...

, Regina Maria Roche

Regina Maria Roche

Regina Maria Roche is considered today to be a minor Gothic novelist who wrote very much in the shadow of Ann Radcliffe. She was, however, a best seller in her own time...

 and Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R...

.

Throughout the nineteenth century and until 1939 much of the Fund's money came from an annual fund-raising dinner at which major public and literary figures exhorted guests to make generous donations. Current funds include the income from these earlier investments and from royalties bequeathed by writers. Amongst the estates from which the Fund earns royalties are those of the First World War poet Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke

Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier...

, the novelists Somerset Maugham and G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....

 and children's writers Arthur Ransome

Arthur Ransome

Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist, best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. These tell of school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. Many of the books involve sailing; other common subjects...

 and A. A. Milne

A. A. Milne

Alan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.-Biography:A. A...

.

Income from the A. A. Milne

A. A. Milne

Alan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.-Biography:A. A...

 estate has enabled the Royal Literary Fund to establish a Fellowship Scheme to place professional writers in universities in the UK. The Fellowship Scheme was established in 1999 under the guidance of Hilary Spurling

Hilary Spurling

Hilary Spurling, CBE, FRSL is a British writer, known as a journalist and biographer. She won the Whitbread Prize for the second volume of her biography of Henri Matisse in January 2006...

. It provides a stipend for established writers to work in universities and colleges to help students and staff to develop their writing skills, concentrating particularly on academic writing. Writers employed include novelists, playwrights, poets, translators, writers of non-fiction and of children's books. By the end of 2006, there were 77 Fellows in 47 institutions throughout the mainland UK.

The Fellowship Scheme also undertakes research into the state of writing amongst British students and school pupils and is proactive in promoting the development of writing skills. Between 2002 and 2005 a group of Project Fellowships existed to carry out research into how the work for the Fellowship could be furthered in the future.

External links

• Royal Literary Fund website
• Current RLF Fellows
• UK colleges and universities with resident RLF Fellows

Sources

The Royal Literary Fund: A Short History, Janet Adam Smith, president RLF 1976-1984

Royal Literary Fund